


Four

by Chloroformation



Category: Watch Dogs (Video Games)
Genre: Attempt at horror, DedSec - Freeform, Easter Egg Spoilers, Game: Watch Dogs 2, Possession, The Shuffler - Freeform, Violence, Watch Dogs Spoilers, What Could Possibly Go Wrong?, paranormal entity
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-28
Updated: 2020-11-05
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:21:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27252589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chloroformation/pseuds/Chloroformation
Summary: Four Stanford students go missing and only one of them returns, possessed by a violent entity.The story of Cloud, Dedsec and the Shuffler.
Comments: 9
Kudos: 2





	1. In The Woods Somewhere

**Author's Note:**

> The mysterious disappearence of the Shuffler four, as reimagined by yours truly. Title song by Hozier.

"Dane, stop fucking around already and get over here!"  
"Ugh, I'm already cold."  
Finally the fourth of the group caught up with his friends, panting like he was about to drop dead.  
"Did you guys not even see how steep that hill was?" He was able to say in between his heavy breaths.  
"No, didn't notice," quipped Cameron. "Must be the icky passive smoke coming from you clouding our eyes."  
"Har har. Really funny," Dane grumbled and tossed a pine cone at Cam. She dodged it and shot an angry glare at the group clown.  
"Guys, time to calm down. Let's do this already, I'm pumped!" Nate, the oldest of the group of friends and the unofficial leader was bursting with excitement at the prospect of coming across something out of this world. "Cloud, you with us?"  
Claudia, the pink haired nerd and the second female member of the group glanced up from her video camera at the sound of her nickname. She'd been focused on getting the lighting and settings just right for the dark railway tunnel.  
"Yep, with you. Everything's good to go on my end, too." She raised the camera to look at her friends and started filming.

"We are here today, on uhh. Shit, what day is it?" Her friends rolled their eyes and laughed.  
"Great intro, doofus. October 28th," Dane snorted.  
"Thank you, Daniel," Cloud continued and watched Dane roll his eyes again, this time to his full name. "We have gathered here today, the night of October 28th, the year of our lord two thousand and twenty, to bear witness to the power and might of the entity named Shuffler." Cloud zoomed the camera into her friends' faces one by one. "Here we have in no particular order; Daniel "Dane" Mitchell, the punkish clown. Cameron "Cam" Ebbs, the beauty. Nathaniel "Nate" MacGregor, the weirdo jock. Oh and last but not least," she turned the camera around at her own face "there's me, Claudia Farrell. Hi!" She waved at the camera and then stopped recording.  
"Now that that's out of the way, can we get this over with? I have class in the morning," Cam huffed, crossing her arms to brace the coolness of the night. 

The group started making their way into the tunnel, shining their phone flashlights on the graffitied walls and littered floor. They had read on online messaging boards that the abandoned tunnel was a Shuffler hotspot, and of course, the curious nerds they were (and broke students), they immediately wanted to make a Blair Witch-esque film about the entity. With the film would come money and fame, but only in their dreams. Most likely it would be seen by some twenty people, mainly from their school, and then forgotten. 

"Fuck it's shitty here," Dane mumbled looking at a fat rat run away from the four figures approaching it. "Why are we doing this again?"  
"For the money, coke and models, Dane. Money, coke and models." Nate wrapped his arm around Dane's shoulders, waving his other arm around with every word, like he was painting a picture of their future.  
"In your dreams, moron," Dane mocked and shrugged Nate's arm off. "I didn't even want to come but of course you had to drag me along."  
Cloud gave Cam a look of amusement that the other woman returned, and started filming again. She panned over her friends and then filmed down the tunnel. The group walked together in silence for a short while, the shuffling of their feet echoing off the walls. 

"So," Cam broke the silence first. "What do you think will happen if we find the thing?"  
Cloud turned the camera her way.  
"You know, what if it attacks us or something?" Cam continued looking more and more anxious as her mind raced with all the possibilities. Nate appeared in the shot next to Cam.  
"It'll probably rip us to shreds," Nate said with a spooky voice, and then continued with his normal one "Or we won't find anything and all we'll get from this experience is a poorly slept night."  
Cam hummed but didn't look any less troubled. There was a slight tension in the air after Nate's words.

The conversation died and the group kept on walking. They were getting pretty far into the tunnel, but could still see the entrance from where they were. They walked for a little while longer until Dane suddenly stopped.  
"Did you guys hear that?" He looked at his friends with wide eyes. They all stopped moving and listened, but couldn't hear anything strange.  
"Don't start," Cam said, looking even more troubled than earlier. "I'm not in the mood for some stupid prank."  
Dane's face didn't look like he was joking, though. "I swear I just heard something. Like... Like shuffling."  
The friends looked at each other, with similar looks of fear settling on their faces. Cloud panned the camera around the tunnel, but couldn't see anything.  
"Dane, I swear if you're fucking with us I'm going to-" Nate started but stopped talking as a shuffling noise came from right next to the group. They all heard it now, like the footsteps of a fifth person. But there were only four.

"I want to go home," Cam whispered. Alarm settled over the group and without saying anything, they all started to move back to where they came from. Cloud kept on filming, trying to catch anything on her camera, but wasn't paying attention anymore. She could check the footage back in the safety of her dorm.  
There was another shuffling noise, this time so loud it rang out in the tunnel, drowning out the groups footsteps. Cam screamed and covered her ears. They all picked up their paces until they were almost running. More sounds came from right behind them, like the thing was running after the group.  
Suddenly, a loud shuffling noise rang out right where Cam had just been, but wasn't anymore. Chaos erupted among the three group members.  
"Oh my god did you- FUCK!"  
"WHERE IS IT?"  
"Where's Cameron? Shit!"  
"Guys we need to get the fuck out of here! Cam will find her way out!" Dane yelled.  
"We can't just fucking leave her here, what if it were y-" Cloud started to protest.  
Their arguing was cut off by Cam's screaming right next to them, coming from the wall.  
"Guys? Guys, I can't see! Oh my fu- guys! Guys it fucking got me! Help me! Oh god please help me it hurts!" Cameron's screams echoed through the tunnel, fading away into the wall, getting quieter with each word as if she was sinking into the wall. They listened in horror until they couldn't hear another sound. They stared at the wall in horror.

"We need to get the fuck out. Now. Before it kills us all. Come on," Nate turned on his heels towards the tunnel exit– and fell through the floor. Cloud and Dane looked at the spot in disbelief, until Dane snapped out of it and started to run, dragging Cloud along with him. The video camera fell out of her hand at the sudden movement.  
"We're almost there, Cloud. Come on, faster." Cloud heard a sound behind her and as she turned to look, Dane's hand disappeared from around her arm. When she whipped her head back around, she could see it getting pulled into the wall next to her. Her brains were screaming "getoutgetoutgetOUTNOWGODPLEASE" and her heart was pounding so hard, drowning out the shuffling sound on her right. She felt herself getting yanked to the wall, and through it. There was a sharp pain shooting all throughout her body, and an awful crunching noise. Cloud realized her bones were all breaking at once. She tried to scream out but couldn't open her mouth anymore. Absolute silence and cold washed over her, and she was enveloped in blackness. 

Claudia, Cameron, Nathaniel and Daniel. The shuffler four, as they would be called on message forums a few weeks later, when details of the police investigation were leaked online. The video camera was found by the SFPD, but they didn't have any clues as to where the students went, and they never would. To avoid any further embarrassment, they hid away the tape and came up with a story that the four ran away together.

But then, seven months later, Claudia walked out of the tunnel as if a day hadn't passed. She was caught in the background of some kids' skateboarding videos they were shooting near the tunnel, after which she vanished like into thin air, leaving the SFPD even more puzzled than before. At first there were eyewitness sightings of her around the Stanford University campus, but she was never caught on security camera footage. Not long after Cloud's reappearance, the police would start to find gruesomely mangled bodies of known gang members, with even more of them vanishing off the face of the Earth. The police were clueless as to who was killing the gang members, but would soon find out all the murders had one thing in common; sightings of Cloud.


	2. The Beginning, part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What happened before.

The Stanford University campus was full of life on the Monday morning. Students were heading for their classes, still all sleepy faced after the weekend. The exam season had begun, and people were rushing around with take-away coffee cups and textbooks. The weather was starting to cool down a bit nearing winter, but the sun still shined bright.

Claudia's dorm room was bright and warm in the morning sunlight. Her head was pounding after the long weekend of important research. And by important research I mean alcohol, partying and *some* research. Cloud groaned, turning her face away from the light, shutting her eyes tighter. She could hear chatting, laughter and doors closing in the hallway. Great, another morning. 

Cloud rolled over with a deep sigh and picked up her phone. 10:21, oh shit. She usually woke up at 8:00 every day, just to keep up a good sleeping rhythm. That had been sabotaged by the discovery of bay area's own boogey man, the Shuffler. Urban legends and ghost stories said it was an entity that lived between worlds, dragging people into the nothingness.

Cloud and her friends had spent the most part of the previous night trying to find out where there had been sightings of the Shuffler, and were now hell-bent on proving its existence. After several bottles of assorted alcoholic beverages, some brainstorming and maybe even a bit of weed, Dane had had the brilliant idea of contacting the hacker group Dedsec about the Shuffler. 

"I mean," Dane had slurred, "if anyone knows anything about the Shuffler, it's gotta be Dedsec."   
So the group had come up with a message for the hackers, and sent it on a hidden messaging board online, where they figured it would be found sooner or later. After that, Cloud's memory was hazy. She could recall more drinking, dancing, and a very angry neighbor pounding on the door.

Now she was paying the price from having a good night. She slowly rolled over and reached into the drawer of her bedside table for some painkillers. After washing down two with leftover Coke from a can on the table, she got up and headed straight for her closet for some sweats. She wasn't planning on doing anything productive the entire day, at least not until her hangover passed.

\---

Cloud started to feel more human again after a long, hot shower. She tied her still damp hair up in a bun and headed into the common area to get a chocolate bar from the vending machine. While returning to her room, she bumped into her neighbor.  
"Hey, idiot. Keep it down next time, some of us want to get some sleep here."   
Damn. Still pissed off. Cloud murmured her apologies and disappeared into the safety of her room, slamming the door shut extra hard just because. Her laptop pinged a new message. She slumped in her chair and opened the notification, only to find it was a reply from Dedsec. Her heart skipped a beat, and she rushed to click the message open.

"Greetings, l1vew1re. We received your message. We are not interested in chasing ghost stories. Provide hard evidence, and we will see about it.   
-dedsec-  
JOIN US"

"God damnit" she sighed. Should've known that they wouldn't care. At least they were polite about it? Cloud leaned back in her chair and stared at the screen for a good minute or two.  
"Evidence..." Her brains were still sleepy but an idea started to form. They want hard evidence, they'll get hard evidence. 

\---

"What do you mean 'a documentary'?" Cam asked, her mouth full of hamburger. Cloud had invited her to the nearest fast food place to discuss her plan.  
"I mean, we make a short documentary about the Shuffler thing, send it over to Dedsec and I dunno. Share it online and get rich?" Cloud said, stuffing fries in her face in between words. The greasy food had never tasted so good.  
"Get rich." Cam repeated, "How exactly do you think we'll get rich? Filming some stupid documentary about something that doesn't exist won't make us rich."  
Cloud took a long sip of her strawberry milkshake.  
"Okay, but just imagine. We unearth the secrets, the conspiracy around the Shuffler and the disappearences linked to it. That's gotta draw some attention. Especially if we can prove to Dedsec that it's a real case, and they give us their backing."  
Cam thought for a while, picking off pickles from her burger with a mildly disgusted look on her face. After a short silence, she sighed.   
"I guess if we actually manage to make it good, and *possibly* make some money out of it, I could be down." Cam raised her finger, shutting Cloud up before she could say anything in response. "Just know" she continued, "if I get killed by this thing, that I by the way still don't believe is real, but just in case. If it kills me, I'll haunt you for the rest of your days for roping me in to this shit."   
Cloud beamed at her friend, happy that she was on board. It wouldn't be difficult to convince the others now. Cloud lifted her milkshake in the air.  
"I'll cheers to that!"

\---

With all three friends on board of the Grand Plan, Cloud felt a sense of accomplishment. Something about Cam's worrying had started to root thoughts in her head though. What if they found the monster was real? What if it attacked them, or worse killed them? What if, what if, what if... 

Cloud sighed and turned over in her bed. It was way past midnight, but she couldn't fall asleep. The entire dormitory was dead silent, save for faint rhythmic squeaking coming from somewhere upstairs. Ugh, great. Now she has to listen to someone bone all night. She tuned out the sounds of nastiness and focused on the sounds of her computer quietly whirring away in the dark. As she started to fall asleep and was on the cusp of consciousness, she heard shuffling footsteps in the hall. The sound dragged against the floor, and grew louder until it came to a sudden stop behind her door. Cloud wrote it off as some drunk neighbor, and fell asleep completely unaware of the shadow figure marking her door with an invisible sigil.

"Soon."


	3. The Beginning, part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What happened before.

The plan was starting to really come together now. It had been three days since Cloud managed to convince her friends about the documentary, and they had met up a few times in between studying and exams. Now they were all gathered in Nate's dorm room, eating takeout chinese. Dane and Cloud's exams were already done, but Nate and Cam still had one more each to go. The plan was to go explore and old decommissioned railroad tunnel up in Oakland, where there had been many "sightings" of the Shuffler. 

"So tomorrow then?" Nate asked, chewing his kung pao chicken.  
"Yeah. You guys finish your exams, it's Friday, the weekend, et cetera." Cloud reached into Cam's fried rice for a taste. The other woman turned her upper body to hide the takeout box from Cloud's greedy chopsticks. 

"I'm going to see my folks in the morning." Dane said and burped. Cam pretended to gag. "I'll ask nicely if my old man would be so kind as to loan his car for the weekend. Should make getting to and from there much nicer than on a stinking bus."   
The other three muttered their approval. There wasn't a bus stop anywhere near the tunnel, so they would've had to walk a long way to get there. 

"I'm still a bit pissed about the Dedsec thing. You'd think that they would love the new followers from going after the Shuffler of all things." Nate said, finishing his food and setting the box aside.  
"I think they have more important things to do, like I dunno, protecting our privacy and all that. Fighting evil corporations, toppling governments..." Cam listed. She also set her takeout box aside, empty. "I think it makes perfect sense they don't want to chase a story that might not even be real, instead of chasing what is definitely real."

Nate sighed and leaned back in his chair. "Guess you're right."  
"Always am." Cam retorted with a wink.  
A short silence fell, while Cloud and Dane finished their meals. Nate turned on some playlist with the volume low. They gathered the empty food containers in the plastic bag they had come in, and scattered to get comfortable around the room. Nate stayed in his desk chair, while Dane threw himself in Nate's bed and Cam and Cloud sat down on the floor, leaning against the bedframe.

"So if I recall correctly, there have been 27 missing persons cases reported near that tunnel." Nate started after everyone was comfortable. "I think we should maybe take some precautions."  
"Precautions? Like bringing a gun or something?" Dane asked, part muffled by Nate's pillow. Nate looked at Dane with annoyance, but let it pass.  
"I don't think any of us have access to one. Plus, we'd just end up hurting ourselves with it anyways." Cam said, ever the voice of reason. The others nodded their agreement.  
"Well, maybe we'll just be on guard then? If anything goes even slightly wrong or any of us feels like going home, we bolt?" Cloud asked, looking around the room and finding more nods. 

"I'll bring my old video camera" Cloud continued, "it has a night vision setting, so just in case we manage to find something, it'll actually show up on the footage."  
"So we're really, really doing this then?" Nate asked, looking a little worried but sounding excited.   
"Looks like we are." Cam responded, turning to look at Cloud. "And if you get us all killed, trust me. I'll be pissed off."

\--- 

After some more planning, the friends parted ways. Cam and Cloud's dorms were in the same building, and they walked there together in silence. The weather was getting colder towards the weekend, as it was supposed to start raining. Cloud hoped silently that they would stay dry the next night, especially considering the camera she was bringing. It would suck if it broke because of rain, or worse, she would have to leave it in the car and not get to film everything.

Cam breathed in deep the chill evening air, shoving her hands in their pockets. She looked troubled, but Cloud knew it was just nerves. Cam was a very practical person, not too unlike Cloud herself, and she was troubled by the idea of discovering the existence of something not explained with science. Cam found comfort in rational thought, and everything regarding the Shuffler was completely irrational. 

The two women made their way into the dormitories, still surrounded by silence. Cam's dorm came up first, and they parted ways with quiet 'good nights'. Cloud made her way to her door down the hall, so deep in thought she didn't notice the dark shadow staring at her a few doors down. Cloud closed her door and leaned back against it with a heavy sigh. She could hear shuffling footsteps in the hall but thought nothing of it again. She stepped away from the door, stripped off her clothes and went straight to bed. The footsteps faded away and Cloud quickly fell asleep, only to have nightmares about a shadow figure the entire night.

\---

The next morning was a struggle. Cloud woke up with a pounding headache and felt as if she hadn't gotten any sleep. She couldn't remember anything about the nightmares, only that she had had them. The day passed slowly, and she packed a small bag of supplies for the upcoming evening. A small bottle of water, her favorite candy bar and the video camera.

As the day started to turn into evening, Cloud felt more and more nervous. It was if she had a mass growing in her belly, getting bigger and bigger by the minute. She usually wasn't one to get nervous, but something about today was different. She tried to pass the time browsing through her social medias, but couldn't focus on anything. She didn't even laugh at a single meme, which she found quite worrying. 

The clock turned 7:30, and Cloud was startled by knocking on her door. Time to go. She picked up her bag and made sure she had everything, grabbed her jacket and opened the door to find an equally nervous looking Cam.  
"What's up?" Cam greeted with a small voice.  
"Oh you know. Monster hunting." Cloud joked, closing the door behind her. "Let's get going."

Dane picked up the rest of the group from the campus, and they drove in silence. The car radio was playing some old rock ballad that nobody was paying attention to. Cloud stared out the window in the backseat, watching the scenery change from campus to commercial buildings, to a bridge, and finally Oakland. 

Nate read directions from his phone when they started to get closer, but there was no other dialogue. Finally they came to a stop at the edge of some woods, the car's headlights illuminating the shape of the tunnel entrance on top of a small hill.   
"Here we go." Nate muttered as Dane shut off the car, casting the tunnel into the dark.  
"Here we fucking go."


End file.
